[pb72 spoilers]: the esteemed gentleman's literature and book club

[greenline]

I definitely wasn't eager to play England. America works well with this start, but I'm not in the mood for playing long term GP plans. Mao of Byzantium it is!

[greenline]

I see no harm...

Aetryn is Vicky/Mali
Xist is Boudicca/Rome
Bing is KK/Aztecs
Greenline is Mao/Byzantine

Looks like your bet on Vicky of Mali was right on the money. And my bet of Shaka of Rome didn't go far enough. Clearly superdeath is tilted enough on the start already to demand Boudicca for maximum rushing potential. Sigh...

Detailed opponent analysis to come in a bit

[greenline]

Picks N Players 

I haven't played a game of civ here in a long time, and know next to nothing about most of the opposition. Bing is the main one I've seen playing, but the other players are blanks. So I'll judge their dedlurkers instead for the kind of playstyle I expect to see.

Xist10 & Superdeath: Boudicca of Rome

This pick makes me sad. Agg and Chm are already the most so-so traits in the mod, with Agg needed several buffs to get to where people want to pick it, and Rome being the poster child for failed, game losing rushes. I have a hard time believing this wasn't an idea heavily pushed by superdeath in an attempt to set a new record for ruining someone's game. This pick has almost zero economic value, and the map doesn't even lend itself well to rushes with it being on the larger side. About the best you could do with it, if you handed it to me, would be to grab IW and just pink dot people in every direction before backfilling, while hoping that praets on hills would let you get away with it. But I don't trust any team involving superdeath to have that level of insight. This team being in the game means everyone else has a 1/3 chance to just immediately lose. Why the hell wouldn't you at least pick Shaka, who has cheap granaries instead of one extra happy on cheap monuments?

Aetryn + Mmjd: Vicky of Mali

This pick is perfectly adequate. Skirmishers are a good, but not great unit. Vicky is never hard to justify, with an easy to use expansion trait backing up an easy to use economic trait. I just question if Mali was really the best pick here for being on the defensive. This team also had the option to pick Greece, whose super spear can hold off knights in addition to HA's with little effort. Having played Mali before, I can say with experience that the economic bonus of the Mint is negligible even if you pick industrious and every city has a forge, which Mmjd does not have here. The Skirmisher will make it easier to hold off superdeathian hordes, but they didn't 100% know that going into this game that there was going to be a psycho Rome player. Then again, maybe they also made the obvious prediction, and I should have as well...

Bing / civac: Kublai Khan 

I don't get the rationale behind this pick. Aztecs want organized, the Jag is a terrible unit for rushing, and their start techs aren't great for settling on people early. Kublai doesn't feel like he adds anything to the civ. Given the amount of hills on the map, I'd much rather play Kublai / Natives or even France. Or I'd pair Aztecs with Julius. I feel like Bing just picked this because he's played a fair amount of games here and wants to try something new. I haven't seen one civac post in his thread (although the communication might be just on discord). 

greenline / Tarkeel: Mao of Byzantium

This wasn't the most optimal pick, I believe. I decided to wager that the start wouldn't be too slowed down by Byzantium that it will result in me losing the settling race. Two early game traits are designed to propel Byzantium to at least the Cataphract era, where I can either pick a weak target (Xist) or wait until a better time to attack with cannons. We'll see.

[Tarkeel]

As most of the players are new to me, I'll focus on the picks and dedlurkers.

Xist (mostly unknown) with Superdeath (chaotic warmonger): Boudica (AGG/CHA) of Rome (Fishing/Mining/Praetorian/Forum)

Rome or China seems the obvious civ choices here.
Leaders are more of a mixed bag; Cyrus or Joao are passable IMP leaders if you can handle the economic downsides. Qin (PRO/IND) would be a sign they are coastal and are targeting The Good Lighthouse. Shaka of Rome is also an option; I doubt they will backslide into Boudica.

Oh boy. What is unsaid about this pick? Well, Superdeath has a penchant for replaying combos, and played this exact combo in PB62. He blames barb for the outcome of that game, where he took a 1/25 chance to lose the game. He did however make one very good move there, building pairs of chariots camoflaged as praetorians, so that's something to be on the lookout for.
The combo itself isn't very good for winning, but great for ruining someones game; see Commodore's corollary one above. Rome is best played with strong expansion traits, using legions of preatorians as a deterrent to be challenged. While AGG helps on finance in the late game and CHA does give some extra whips in the early game, it's not nearly enough for this to shine.


Bing (carefree opportunist) with civac (careful perfectionist): Kublai Khan (AGG/CRE) of Aztecs (Hunting/Mysticism/Jaguar/SacAltar)

Predicting Bing is hard, but of these civs I think he'll go for wither Carthage or Khmer.
Julius is perhaps the best leader in CtH on emperor, but both Willem and Giggles are good candidates as well.
I think civac would pick Giggles of France.

Predicting Bing is hard, and I don't see much of civac's hand in this pick. Azteca is a puzzling pick without SPI do to the slavery dance, while Kublai is a passable leader. CRE is likely to be good on this map, and I know civac has been impressed by the savings AGG can have in the late game.
Bing as a player is easy to underestimate, but he's not actually a bad player: he just plays each turn as it comes to him, and has limited long-term planning. He'll happily attack if he senses an opportunity, and has been learning some tricks in the latest few games. Civac on the other hand is perhaps one of the best active players. His main weakness is that he's very risk averse, and would rather not play an opening that doesn't have a guaranteed benefit.


Aetryn (unknown) with Mjmd (detail-oriented oathbreaker): Victoria (FIN/IMP) of Mali (Wheel/Mining/Skirmisher/Mint)

I know Mjmd has a softspot for Mali, almost as big as his love of India. Most of the others are possible picks, but I doubt they will take Mongolia.
Several good leaders here, but again Mjmd loves Viccy. Could also see them going with Sury, or Stalin of Japan, or another IND leader of Mali.

Look, it's another PB62 contender! I don't think Mjmd managed to get the most out of this pick in that game, getting bogged down in a prolonged border skirmish with two neighbors because he overextended. Mjmd is great at micro, but he seems to never have a good read on the macro. His main weakness seems to be estimating opponents, both on their actual strength and how which options they have available to themselves, while at the same time underestimating his own position.
I believe their plan is to use Viccy to expand into (hopefully for them) fertile land while using skirmishers to deter attacks. Since the game is played on Monarch, Viccy migth actually be the best leader for this map. Mali isn't a bad pick, but not the one I'd take.



Overall, I think these picks are good for us. Rome is the only fast starting techs, and they have a leader holding them back. Mali could be dangerous early on if they go for a choke, and Azteca just seems like a bad pick.

[greenline]

From your experience, how do the TR bonuses from PRO scale depending on difficulty?

Based on the starting screenshot, it looks like the best first move for the scout is SE-E. Unless the terrain in that direction is really bad, I'm convinced that moving the capital 1E is the way to go. Still gets all the existing resources in the BFC, but pulls in more land tiles, less water, and it means you don't have to ferry a worker over the water to improve everything.

[Tarkeel]

The value of PRO traderoutes varies greatly in the different stages of the game. They're at their worst in the mid-stages where you have foreign trade coming in, and at their very best when you have internal inter-continental routes (aka island cities). They are at their very best in the late stages, where you can run Mercantilism without any noticeable hit to traderoutes. PRO also lets you use open borders more strategically, as they don't necessarily benefit you economically.

Since we start with Wheel, there's no reason why our two first cities shouldn't have a trade connection before founding.

[Tarkeel]

Based on the starting screenshot, it looks like the best first move for the scout is SE-E. Unless the terrain in that direction is really bad, I'm convinced that moving the capital 1E is the way to go. Still gets all the existing resources in the BFC, but pulls in more land tiles, less water, and it means you don't have to ferry a worker over the water to improve everything.

I forgot to answer this. Completely agree that SE should be the first scout move, and then either E or SE. Moving the capital to either of the other two plainshills loses us a turn of production, but the worker will improve the wheats at the same turn regardless, but the road won't be complete. So there is a cost, but it's not very large.

[greenline]

I actually think losing the road on the tile between the wheats isn't a big deal. A settler leaving the capital won't lose any movement without the road, and the road there won't be needed to jumpstart any initial TRs - it mainly matters to connect the second city to one of those rivers, assuming they go further than what we can see.

For the production that the capital will have after finishing the worker and before starting the settler, do we want to build a work boat or a warrior? No barbs means the starting scout can keep going for a while, and no one has something like an impi or a holkan to rush with.

[Krill]

My gut says that a workboat start is a red herring here, because there are no unimproved 3f tiles to grow onto. Yes, a 2f2h tile is good, but growing onto it won't feed the growth cycle in the same way, so a classic worker first is better. That devalues the need for fishing somewhat, but Mao of England is perhaps the strongest pick here (albeit boring). I still think Ramesses of Sumer would be fun, but it's also borderline variant play. Peter of America would also be good, but I'll happily follow along with whatever you pick. Byzantium really can't hope for a much better start than double agriculture though.

Suggestion: Look at the micro for variant starts before assuming you know which one is best.

[greenline]

You can roast me in the lurker thread if I'm wrong about this, but I tried out the micro for WB first and didn't come up with much useful. You can cram out a WB fast on the plains hill or work the ivory on the way to size two. Even if you do this with a fishing civ, you still end up building the worker afterwards, but you only have time to farm one wheat instead of two. The wheat has an extra hammer over the fish, and it's way easier to share one of the wheats with a second city instead of the fish, because there's no way to move the settler efficiently to the west.

Didn't RtR and ToW give a trait +25% to workboat production specifically to make WB first starts more viable? That's missing here.